• DID in my humble opinion (and many others) develop the best flight simulators, and you won't go far wrong with F22 ADF or EF2000. Get them now! And if choppers are your thang, then you'd better pick up Jane's Longbow 2. Recently, there have emerged some gorgeous sims, and I can't recommend enough Microprose's Falcon 4 and European Air War, as well as Jane's World War II Fighters.
• The place to find out what sims are around, how good they are, what their faults are, and what's in the pipeline, is Combat Sim. These guys live, breathe and sleep flight simulators, and no-one is better informed out there on the net than these guys. And boy, do they keep their site up-to-date or what!
• You'd better have some decent hardware to get the most out of today's and future sims, a fast processor and loads of RAM are of course obligatory, but more so now is the need to have an excellent 3DFx card, incorporating the Voodoo 3DFx or Voodoo 2 3DFx chipsets. I use an Orchid Righteous coupled to a Matrox Millenium II and they're gorgeous. Oh, one more thing, whilst you've got your wallet out, get yourself a really good sub-woofer and some reinforced concrete for your walls. If you want to find out all the pos and cons of various pieces of hardware, then check out Tom's Hardware Guide.
• No serious flight sim addict would be without true HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) controls throwing all your keyboard commands onto a joystick and throttle control. Join the debate as to who makes the best if you want to, or save yourself the stress and get yourself Thrustmaster controllers like the brilliant F22 PRO joystick and F-16 TQS throttle, running off a dedicated speed adjustable dual port game card. And to help you program these, get yourself either Commander 2, EZ Build or Winstick, but best of all, get the completely sexy and gorgeous Fox Two Pro (OK - I admit it, I'm biased. But then I developed Fox Two Pro!!). If you're having problems with your Thrustmaster hardware, you may want to see if you've got the latest software versions here. For reviews of their products, I'd check out Combat Sim and GameCenter.com.
• There are a lot of homepages out there dedicated to flight sims and military aircraft, but in my humble opinion, they don't come much better than these .... Eagle's Flight Sim Page, Cowboy's Thrustmaster Users Group, Fighter Tactics Academy and Snajper's Inn. And for some great links, check out those on the Flight Sim Central links page.
• Finally, the newsgroup flight sim addicts all congregate in is comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.flight-sim - see you there sometime! :)

Now I'm old enough to remember the days of the Sinclair ZX80, Tandy TRS 80, Commodore PET and the BBC computers, and to have witnessed the technology explosion, from these humble machines to today's powerhouses is nothing short of breath taking. But funnily enough, I'm still glad to see my favourite language BASIC is hanging in there. I spend a lot of my time programming, using Microsoft Visual Basic 5 Professional, and it's gorgeous. It may not produce the smallest or fastest apps, (I remember the 1Kb limit on the PET very well!) but it certainly is the fastest development language. You can create a beefy app much quicker than it would take you in something like C. And of course, the reality is that unless you're programming games or heavily intensive graphics apps, most of the time the program sits idle waiting for the user to do something, and not the other way round.

• My first port of call is always VBnet as the advanced programming tips here are superb. The site is regularly maintained, and my own app Fox Two would be very amateurish without some of the tips I've learned here. And talking of tips, whether you're into VB or not, why not get a tip on your favourite apps delivered directly to you from ZDTips for free every week. What a great way to learn.
• When you're programming and you're running up against a brick wall, it's more than likely that others have had similar problems, so have a good hunt round the Microsoft Knowledge Base to see if your solution is already out there. Or try their advanced search page. The Visual Basic Support site can often get you out of a scrape, or have a hunt through this list of problems, bugs and fixes.
• Writing your first help file is so daunting, and I have to say that the help files accompanying VB5 don't really shed much light on the matter. So here's what you need. Use Word for Windows for creating your help files - you save them as RTF files, and get hold of Microsoft Help Compiler - you need this especially if you're using Word '97 otherwise you'll be stuffed when you try to compile its RTF files. The help file in Microsoft Help Compiler is excellent - read it well.
• A new discovery for me - if you're into games development, then you'd better check out Matt Westfall's site. And for some great controls, I'd look to see what Mabry Software's Home Page has to offer.

• comp.lang.basic.visual.misc
• microsoft.public.vb.controls
• microsoft.public.vb.winapi
• microsoft.public.vb.bugs
• microsoft.public.vb.ole
• microsoft.public.vb.syntax

If you're expecting a long list of links to my friends' homepages, forget it. Don't get me wrong - they're very intelligent people. It's just that their knowledge of setting up homepages is actually less than their knowledge of the lesser spotted, artichoke eating, rabbit's mating call. Still, a few of them do know what they're doing, so let me introduce them ...

• Well, you've seen the X-files no doubt, so my first guest needs no further introduction ... Chris Carter. Oh all right, so its not the Chris Carter, but you really ought to take a wonder over to his site and see what can be achieved when you have an excellent knowledge of HTML. And his Disney pages are breathtaking. Enjoy!
• An old buddy of mine from University days, Will is one talented guy. A diving instructor, pilot, excellent swimmer, computer programmer and a bloody electronics genius, this guy redefines the term "gifted." Browse around his site and take a look at some of his computer artwork. People who are as talented as this just make me sick! No offence Will! :)
• Avi's just getting to grips with HTML, but as you can see, he's a quick learner! Well, let me qualify that last statement ... once he gets going he's quick. But you should have seen how long it took me to get him into creating a homepage. And then there's the story about persuading him to buy a computer ...... I reckon by the end of the century I'll wean him off that 14 inch monitor as well! Anyway, this is one person to look out for in the dental world of tomorrow - he really is that damned good. Just don't play snooker with him though .... :)
• One of my closest friends, Johan's site holds a lot of memories for me. My final year in Dentistry was damned stressful, but it was also a year of great fun. I just don't know how Johan and I spent so much time on our permanent Ethernet connections, surviving on about 3 hours sleep a night! But it was worth it - endless evenings flying online together, surfing, we had the best times - and the beauty of the net of course is that even though he's now back in Sweden, it's as though we still lived in the same hall, because we're often chatting in the evening on ICQ, just like old times :)

I've come across some interesting sites, so in no particular order ....

• I'd be lost without MedLine, the Medical journal reference locator.
• Buying or selling, the best and latest adverts are always in The Loot. Check out what things cost here in beautiful tropical idyllic England ... err ...
• I'm sure you've received a good map book for Christmas, but was sending it to another relative for their present really that great an idea? Oh well, see if you can find one here.
• If you're well read, you'll read The Economist - a brilliant business publication, now on the WWW.
• Now this one's an interesting site - The anonymiser. Did you know that when you're surfing the net, Big Brother is watching you? No? Go here and find out what they can know about you already.
• A popular science program watched by millions in this country (not least of all because it's filmed live and their experiments go deliciously wrong every now and then!), Tomorrows World is excellent. One of the many pages from the World's best television network, the BBC.
• Cameras on the Net! The title says it all....you can now visit sites which have cameras connected to the net which take photos of wherever they're pointing to periodically. Including the Antarctic, Sydney .... brilliant.
• Lost in England? Maybe you need a street map. And if you've no idea where England is, ya gonna need a bigger map.
• Read about the fascinating history of the Pirelli Calendar, and take a look at this month's offering.